Tech Inspire+

Microsoft announces Box app for Windows 10

2015-11-20T04:15:00.002-08:00

Microsoft has announced Box app for Windows 10. Duncan Fisher who works for the mobile applications product management team at Box wrote in a Windows blogpost that with ‘50,000 paying businesses, including 52% of the Fortune 500 and more than 40 million users, it’s critical for Box to ensure that customers can work on their content across a wide variety of devices and platforms’.

The Box for Windows 10 app promises secure content along with features such as managing content across devices such as Windows PCs, tablets and phones, and also share files with anyone. It will allow previewing Office content easily including a variety of file types such as Office files, PDFs, images and more. Users can also create and collaborate on Office files and receive real-time updates.

“Under Satya Nadella, Microsoft has pushed boldly into a cloud-first, mobile-first world, opening up its platforms to integrate with best-of-breed tools (like Box) and improve the experience for their customers. This move has ultimately made it easy for enterprises to choose the vendors they want to work with, enabling more productivity and collaboration within the workplace,” Aaron Levie writes in a Box blogpost.

Box for Windows 10 also focuses on multitasking. It will allow users to work on Box and other apps side by side with the Windows 10 multitasking feature that will resize Box to make it as big or small as you need. Moreover, it also mentions the ability to pin certain Box files and favorites right to the Start screen using Windows 10 Live Tiles.

Box for Windows 10 app is now available in the Windows store for PCs and tablets. It is expected to be available for phones running Windows 10 soon.

Improving your Android memory management

2015-09-30T16:35:00.000-07:00

Intel Developer Blog: Advice for improving memory usage, avoiding Android memory leak and analyzing your Android memory consumption

If you build a memory-hungry application, it can be difficult to fix if it triggers out-of-memory errors. In a new article on Intel Developer Zone, Bin Zhu encourages Android developers to use memory efficient practices from the outset as they write their Android applications.

He offers ten tips for improving memory usage, five tips for avoiding Android memory leaks, and four tips for analysing your Android memory consumption with DDMS, adb and Eclipse Memory Analyzer Tool (MAT).

Adopting these tips can help you to avoid the nightmare scenario where you’ve finished main programming project but have to take on risky refactoring work to get around memory limitations. Read the article here.

For more help with creating your games, visit Intel Developer Zone Android, which also includes testing services and a new video tutorial series.

Kickass Tools for Mobile Game Developers

2015-09-17T09:15:00.000-07:00

This is my post after 3 years of long break !
Remember the days when videogames were considered a living room activity? Now, deciding when, where and how to play them is entirely up to you. Who would have said the smartphone industry could have such an impact on videogames. The future of gaming lies in the hand of competent mobile game developers, and today, we’re here with 5 tools that every mobile game developer should use.

Viximo

An important part of developing a mobile game is let people know of its existence. If you don’t feel like spending a lot of time distributing your apps on every social media platform Viximo will do it for you. Viximo helps app and game developers expand the functionality and reach of their products. They partner with social game developers to publish their games on over a dozen social networks throughout the world.

Game Closure

This small startup based in Silicon Valley builds cutting edge gaming technology. They’ve open-sourced their multiplatform Java game SDK for you to use. Game Closure runs on both mobile and tablet devices.

Scoreoid

This is the ultimate server platform for game developers. If you’d like to talk with game experts while developing your app this is the place for you. Scoreoid is an advanced gaming platform from backend to real time interaction with game players.

Construct 2

This is a mobile game maker for Windows that lets you create iOS, Android and even Facebook games without the need of being a programming genius. Construct 2 is also known as the Photoshop for games and it uses a simple ‘event-based’ interface. What are your waiting to try it?

YoYo Games

YoYo Games is the home of ‘GameMaker: Studio’, the fastest and easiest to use cross-platform game development technology. The platform uses a drag and drop visual interface to let you create games for Android and iOS.

You can follow us on Twitter or join our Facebook Fan Page for more updates like this and You can also ask a problems related to computers or technology on Ask Tech Inspiration+ and get your solutions faster !

Samsung Galaxy S III Android 4.1 Jelly Bean Update Starts Hitting Europe — “Gradually” Heading To Other Markets

2012-09-24T03:35:00.001-07:00

Samsung has begun rolling out Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean) to its Galaxy S III smartphone in Europe — which could mean the handset is the first non-Nexus Android phone to get updated to Android 4.1.
Galaxy S III owners in Poland are first in the queue for the Jelly Bean update which began rolling out there today. Samsung confirmed the update in a statement, adding that it will be “gradually introduced to other markets” — with no further details on specific markets and timeframes.
“The availability and schedule of the software upgrade will vary by market and wireless carriers’ requirements,” the statement adds — a stock warning to expect some carrier foot-dragging. The Google-branded Samsung Galaxy Nexus and the Nexus S were due Jelly Bean updates in mid-July, along with the Motorola Xoom and Nexus 7 tablets — although that mid-July timeframe hasn’t always been stuck to. For instance Engadget just reported it took until two days ago for the Verizon-branded Galaxy Nexus to finally get its payload of Jelly Beans.
The Android 4.1 update brings a raft of improvements and new features to the S III, including real-time reminders and recommendations from Google Now, plus speed and responsiveness boosts thanks to OS additions such as triple buffering in the graphics pipeline, and enforced consistent frame-rate for all drawing and animations. Android 4.1 also makes educated guesses about where your fingers are heading as you swipe and flick the screen to improve responsiveness.
In addition to the changes wrought by Android 4.1, Samsung is updating some of its software on the S III — including adding the ability to resize the Pop Up Play video window. Here’s the full list of new Samsung software features:

With the Easy Mode, users can find 5 large Easy widgets on the home screen which allow quick and easy access to the frequently used applications. The Easy widgets include both 4×2 and 4×4 arrangements of Favorite contacts, Favorite apps, Favorite settings, and Clock and Alarm.
Blocking Mode adds extra convenience, enabling users to block incoming calls, notifications, alarms and LED indicators for a designated period of time.
A pause function is added to the camera, so users can record a continuous video while only capturing the moments they want; just like on a video camera, the recording can easily be stopped and resumed.
Users now can place the upgraded ‘Pop up play’ to watch a video anywhere on the phone’s screen while running other apps, and can change the size of the player window.

Samsung is already lining up a new Android 4.1 device coming to Europe in October, and the U.S. in November — the Galaxy Note II — so it makes sense for the company to get Jelly Bean onto its other flagship handset, the S III, without serious delay. The Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) update to Samsung’s 2011 flagship phone, the Galaxy S II, took months to arrive so it’s also likely Samsung is keen for the update process to run more smoothly this time around.
Samsung also confirmed Jelly Bean will be coming to additional devices “soon” — here’s the full list:

Following soon will be Jelly Bean upgrades for GALAXY Tab 2 7.0 & 10.1, GALAXY Note 10.1, GALAXY SII, GALAXY Note, GALAXY Tab 7.0 Plus, GALAXY S Advance, GALAXY SII LTE, GALAXY Music, GALAXY Chat, GALAXY Ace 2, GALAXY Beam, GALAXY Ace Plus, GALAXY mini II and GALAXY S DUOS.

Find Out How Much Traffic a Website is Getting

2012-09-24T03:34:00.001-07:00

Do you want to spy (or ‘research’) on your competitors to know how much traffic their sites are getting?
Now there are a bunch of traffic estimation services (like Alexa, Compete, Quantcast, etc.) from where you can obtain statistics (page views + unique visitors) of almost any website for free but is the data accurate? I did a rough comparison using actual data from Google Analytics data and here are the results:
1. Alexa – Alexa won’t tell you the actual page views of a site but an estimate of the percentage of Internet users that may have visited your site during a given period. Now assuming that the number of Internet users did not changed drastically in the past 6 months or so, a site’s reach as determined by Alexa can be proportional to the unique visitors.
Verdict: The Alexa chart pattern for my blog is fairly similar to Google Analytics which is actually very surprising.

2. Trends for Websites – Google Trends uses data from Google search, Google Analytics and other third-party market research services. Since Google search is the largest source of traffic to most websites (especially those in the tech domain), Trends for Website can give a fairly accurate estimate of site traffic.
Verdict: Google Trends estimation of "daily unique visitors" can get very close to actual numbers but the only problem is that Trends doesn’t provide data for low-traffic websites.
3. StatBrain – This is the only service that claims to provide a count of daily visitors to any website. StatBrain does so using data from a number of external sources like Alexa Rank, backlinks in Google, location of web server, etc.
Verdict: StatBrain says that Digital Inspiration gets around 33k unique visitor per day which is definitely on the lower side but still not a very bad guess.

4. Compete – You can use Compete to estimate the total US traffic for nearly every site on the web. Compete uses data from ISPs, their own toolbar and other data source to calculate the unique visitors and hits (or pageviews) of a site.
Verdict: Very close to actual data but limited to visitors from US only so you won’t get the true picture for an international website.
5. QuantCast – Like Compete, QuantCast too gives an estimate of hits and unique visitors along with visitor demographics.
Verdict: Data is not available for all websites and also less accurate than Compete (at least for Digital Inspiration) though the situation may be different for quantified sites.

6. Google Ad Planner – This is my favorite tool that is both accurate and comprehensive. You get to know the traffic of any website in a particular geographic region (or worldwide), average number of visits per visitor, total page views, unique visitors and the broad category of that site.
Here’s how you can use Google Ad Planner to determine the traffic of any website:
1. Click the "Begin Research" tab in your Ad Planner dashboard.
2. Type the URLs of all websites that you want to research in the "Sites Visited" section of "Online Activity"
3. You’ll see that all those sites now appear on the right side. Click the name of the site to view the traffic and demographic details of that site.
Verdict: Highly recommended.
Bonus Tip: If you need to check the rankings of any website on multiple services in one go, try Dataopedia or Attention Meter. Both these services offer traffic graphs from Alexa, Compete, Quantcast, etc. on the same page.

How to use OneNote as a Task Manager for the iPhone

2012-09-24T03:31:00.003-07:00

Microsoft Office OneNote, the best note taking program for Windows, is now available for your iPhone as well. Like most other iPhone-only apps, this new OneNote app can also be installed on your iPad and the interface looks decent even after the 2x zoom.
OneNote is now cloud aware. You can take notes on your desktop computer and they get synched with your laptop or you may access them from the browser using OneNote’s web app.
[*] The OneNote app is available as a free download on iTunes.com but is currently limited to US users only. If you are outside the US, please read this workaround on how to install US-specific iPhone apps from international locations.

Maintain To-Do Lists on the iPhone with OneNote

If you are a OneNote user and have been looking for a simple task manager /to-do list app that can sync tasks between your desktop and your mobile phone, look no further.
Here’s how you can setup OneNote notebooks and to-do lists to sync-up with your phone:
Step 1. Go to office.live.com and sign-up for Office web apps with your Windows Live ID. If you already have an Office Live account, simply sign-in.
Step 2. Open OneNote on your desktop and either create a new notebook for keeping your To-Do lists or simply use an existing notebook. Choose File – > Share – > Web so that you can access that notebook from anywhere on the web.

Step 3. Now that our environment is set-up, let’s create a task-list in OneNote. You can go this in two ways.

Click that little drop-down near New Page and choose Page Templates – > Planners – > Simple To Do List.
Alternatively, just start writing anywhere on the current page and press “Ctrl + 1” to convert it into a task or a to-do item.

Step 4. Next launch the OneNote app on your iPhone /iPad, sign-in with your Windows Live ID and it will download your pending tasks list that you created on the desktop. Here you can add new tasks, edit existing one or mark them as complete.
Once you have made the changes, tap the Settings icon and choose Sync. Within minutes, these changes should be reflected in the OneNote notebook that’s on your desktop.
The first version of OneNote app offers basic features and doesn’t support rich formatting. You may have obviously come across much better task managers for the iPhone but the one big advantage with OneNote is that you don’t need to run any another app on your desktop to sync your tasks with the cloud.

Shop at Online U.S. Stores from Outside America

2012-09-24T03:29:00.003-07:00

This is a guide for people living outside the U.S. who would like to order products from U.S. based online stores (like Amazon.com or Best Buy) and get them shipped to a non-US address even if the store offers no international shipping.

Shop at Online U.S. Stores from Anywhere

Are you craving to own that latest mobile phone that just launched in the USA and may take months to reach your country. Or are you getting a great deal on some product at an online store but they won’t ship it to your country?
Well, if you have an international credit card and don’t mind paying the shipping costs, custom duties and other charges, here are some services that can help you shop at your favorite online U.S. stores from anywhere.

1. eBay with Worldwide Shipping

You normally use your country specific eBay site for shopping (like eBay.in for India) but with the same account, you can also shop on eBay.com, eBay.co.uk and all the other eBay websites.
Here’s a tip – while looking for products on eBay.com, set the “Items available to” advanced search option to your country’s name and eBay will then only show you items where the seller has indicated that they are willing to ship to your country.

2. Appoint a Virtual Cousin in US

Imagine having a cousin in America. You go to Amazon.com, buy some electronic gadgets and music DVDs using your own credit card but give your cousin’s address for delivery. Amazon ships the stuff to your cousin’s place who then ships it to you.
Package forwarding services like vPost or Shipito are like your ‘virtual’ cousins. They’ll provide you with a personal U.S. address that you can use as the delivery address when shopping at any of the online U.S. stores be it Amazon, Gap, Macy’s or Apple.com.
When your package arrives at their warehouse, they’ll forward them to you via DHL or FedEx just like your helpful cousin. If you choose to buy from multiple stores, like a router from eBay and a camera from Amazon, these ‘forwarding’ services will repackage everything into one parcel so as to reduce the overall shipping cost.

3. Shopping without your Credit Card

Even if you give them a US address, some US merchants won’t accept payments through international credit cards that don’t have a US based billing address. And then there could be some people who may not have an international credits card at all.
If you are one of those, or if you are trying to shop at a store that won’t accept your non-US credit card, you can either use the Assisted Purchase service from Shipito to make the purchase.
With Assisted Purchase, you send the payment via Wire Transfer to Shipito who will then make the purchase on your behalf. In the case of BuyForMe, you can make the payment to comGateway using PayPal or any credit card and they’ll use their own card to pay the merchant(s).

Preparation For Apple’s iPhone Event Is Underway

2012-09-09T00:56:00.005-07:00

If you’ve been paying attention at all, you know that the next iPhone is right around the corner. Apple has sent out invites to a September 12 event — that’s on Wednesday, by the way — just as we’ve long expected.

The event is to be held at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, which just so happens to be located right next to the hotel we’re staying at for Disrupt (Hackathon begins today, by the way). In proper Apple fashion, the company has already begun preparation for the announcement event, hanging a massive Apple banner outside of the huge event center.

The banner has the same rainbow-flavored background that Apple’s been using for a while for its events.

The next iPhone will no doubt make a big splash. It’s got a larger screen, marking the first time that Apple has ventured from the 3.5-inch sweet spot. It’ll also have a new, smaller mini-port, along with a two-tone metal backplate and possibly NFC.

We reported earlier this month that Apple will release the next iPhone on September 21, and things seem to be matching up well for this.

Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 Review: So Close To Greatness

2012-08-20T04:02:00.003-07:00

Short Version

Months ago, deep in the heart of Barcelona’s Fira Montjuic exhibition center, I played with Samsung’s 10.1-inch Galaxy Note tablet for the first time. Booth attendants were quick to note that the units thousands of other geeks and I were playing with weren’t quite final, but that didn’t stop me from offering up some kind words for the tablet in training.

Now, nearly six months after that beautiful day in Spain, the Galaxy Tab 10.1 is finally ready to take the stage here in the United States. Samsung’s Galaxy Note phablet became a surprise hit shortly after it launched last year, and Samsung is clearly hoping that the Note formula will propel this new tablet into the big leagues. Thankfully, the tablet that goes on sale tomorrow isn’t exactly the same as the one that nearly every member of the tech press played with in February — it’s definitely better — and if it weren’t for a few shortcomings, the Galaxy Note 10.1 may well have been the Android tablet to beat.

Features:

10.1-inch LCD display running at 1280 by 720
Android 4.0.4 Ice Cream Sandwich with Samsung’s custom UI (Jelly Bean coming later this year)
1.4GHz quad-core Samsung Exynos processor
2GB of RAM
16 or 32GB of internal storage, accepts microSD cards as large as 64GB
5MP rear camera, 1.9MP front-facing camera
Wi-Fi only
MSRP: $499 for the 16GB model, $549 for the 32GB model, available on August 16

Pros:

The S-Pen is a joy to use on a big screen
Strong spec sheet means great performance
Split-screen multitasking!

Cons:

Build quality doesn’t inspire confidence
The cameras are underwhelming
Samsung’s UI can be a bit overbearing

Long Version

HARDWARE & DESIGN

Aesthetically speaking, Samsung wasn’t keen on taking risks when it came to the Galaxy Note 10.1 — it doesn’t stray far from some of the company’s other recent Android tablets, especially the 10.1-inch Galaxy Tab 2. The Note’s 10.1-inch PLS LCD panel is bounded by a considerable bezel, which itself is encircled by rim of metallic-looking plastic that also houses the tablet’s two speakers.

Meanwhile, the headphone jack, IR blaster, and microSD slot are all easily accessible from the top edge of the Note 10.1’s frame, and the now-standard Samsung dock connector rests along the Note’s bottom. Turning the tab over reveals a nondescript back with the same finish seen on the Galaxy S III, with a bright faux-metal strip containing the 5-megapixel camera running along the top. That the Note looks an awful lot like its predecessor isn’t much of a problem (they’re both rather handsome devices), I couldn’t help but wish that Samsung had gone a slightly more adventurous route when it came to design.

Hell, I would’ve settled for a mild switch-up. As you could probably tell by the placement of the two speakers and the front-facing camera, the Note 10.1 is a tablet that’s meant to be held horizontally. Normally, this wouldn’t be much of an issue, but using the Galaxy Note as, well, a notepad often feels more comfortable when holding the Note 10.1 vertically.

Bulid quality is typical Samsung — that is to say slim (8.89mm), light (1.31 lb.) and plasticky. When crafting the new Note tablet, Samsung was concerned about keeping its weight down so as not to make it too unwieldy when being held with one hand. They succeeded (as the usually do) on that front, but the decision isn’t without it’s drawbacks. There’s a bit of audible creaking to be heard if you apply a bit of pressure to the edges and there’s a considerable amount of give felt when pressing down on the (handsomely finished) back panel. Hardly the most confidence-inspiring construction you’ll ever come across in a tablet, but that’s just the price you’ll have to pay.

Samsung’s included S-Pen has also gone under the knife since last I saw it — gone is the capacitive “eraser” nub that used to live opposite the pen’s tip. On the upside though, Samsung finally managed to carve out a bit space in the Note 10.1’s rear end so there’s finally a place for the S-Pen to rest when not in use. It seemed like a downright damning omission six months ago, and thankfully Samsung made the right decision when it came time for a proper release.

SOFTWARE

As usual, Samsung has gone to great lengths to cover up any semblance of stock Android 4.0.4 with its own custom UI. Longtime readers may know that I’m an avowed lover of untouched Android, but I’ve played around with enough Samsung devices that I’ve grown accustomed to its many quirks.

Seasoned Android users won’t have much trouble figuring out where all the usual bits and pieces are, but the Note 10.1’s UI has plenty of little touches that can be easily missed. Tapping the clock in the bottom right corner opens a window full of radio toggles, with brightness controls and notifications nestled neatly under them. Touching that little white arrow smack in the middle of Android’s black navigation bar will display a slew of oft-used apps, and long-pressing the homescreen lets users add widgets without having to fire up the app launcher first.

Most of this isn’t particularly new but the Note has a few even neater tricks up its metaphorical sleeve. Some of them are pretty minor — removing the S-Pen from its holster brings up a customizable list of apps for quick access, and Galaxy S III’s picture-in-picture video viewer make an appearance — but one feature in particular stands above the rest. Samsung has been adamant about playing up the Note 10.1’s productivity angle, so the Korean company implemented one of the best features I’ve ever seen in any tablet: split-screen multitasking.

When you find yourself poking around inside of the few supported apps (in this case, S Note, Polaris Office, and the stock web browser, gallery, email, and video player apps), a “Multiscreen option” appears in the top right corner of the screen. Tap on that to select a secondary app to fire up, andvoila — each app takes up half of the screen, allowing users to get even more work done (or get distracted much faster) in one sitting. Even better, users can drag and drop content from within one pane to another as needed. This, in short, is damned awesome.

Since this version of the Galaxy Note doesn’t play well with 3G or 4G networks, there’s no carrier bloatware to be found here — just Samsung’s suite of preloaded apps and services. The pen-optimized S Note (with its formula match and shape match features in tow) comes along for the ride, as is Samsung’s S Suggest recommendation service, which highlights apps that Samsung has confirmed will play nice with the hardware in question. Productivity buffs will be happy to know Polaris Office returns to the fold as well and who could forget about ChatON, Samsung’s mobile messaging service? (I almost did.)

The Note 10.1 also ships with a handful of third party apps meant to give the hardware a chance to shine. The Peel remote control app is also back to put that integrated IR blaster to good use, while apps like Photoshop Touch, Kno Textbooks and Crayon Physics all sport S-Pen support for when the urge to doodle or take notes suddenly strikes.

PERFORMANCE AND THE S-PEN

Let’s get a few things out of the way first — the Galaxy Note 10.1 is a real heavy-hitter, thanks mainly to its 1.4GHz quad-core Exynos processor and 2GB of RAM. To put a numerical point on things, the Note 10.1’s average of five Quadrant scores breaks down to 5251, while its predecessor the Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 usually managed scores between 2600 and 2800.

Even with all that horsepower, there’s a noticeable bit of visual lag when swiping back and forth through different homescreens because of all the widgets Samsung has crammed into them by default. That’s easily remedied by deleting all those widgets and exercising sound judgment when it comes to adding new ones, but it’s mildly irritating that you have to worry about it at all. That said, the Note 10.1 handled my usual test games (Grand Theft Auto III, Minecraft Pocket Edition) and test videos with hardly any trouble at all.

But let’s be honest — that’s not exactly the sort of performance you want to hear about. Well fine friends, let’s talk about the S-Pen for a bit.

First things first, it definitely works as advertised and it seems much more accurate than in its last big outing. Thanks to the integrated Wacom digitizer (plus the additional tips that come in the box) I was able to exercise precision control while sketching and writing, as well as use the S-Pen to effectively mouse-over elements on a webpage by holding it over the screen. I’ll admit I didn’t spend too much time with original Galaxy Note, but using an S-Pen on a larger screen just seems so much more natural on a larger display. I spent a few solid hours this past weekend just drawing faces and robots like in S Note like I did when I was a kid — there’s something sort of magical about this pen/display size combination.

One major improvement came about because of the Note 10.1’s larger screen — it hard to avoid resting one’s wrist on that sizable display while writing or doodling, and thankfully the tab’s palm detection functionality works like a charm… most of the time. It’s the sort of issue that depends on the app being used at that particular moment, and some of them just aren’t are smart as others. Samsung’s own pen-friendly apps (S Memo) never seems to struggle with ignoring a user’s hand, but apps like the pre-loaded Photoshop Touch often left me wondering why my sketches weren’t taking shape until I physically lifted my hand off the screen. Thankfully, incidents like that were few and far between.

There are, of course, a few issues to be aware of. Take app compatibility for instance — avid mobile sketchers with preferred apps will probably find that full S-Pen support is tough to come by. Make no mistake, using the S-Pen with apps like Autodesk Sketchbook is still a far cry from using a dumb capacitive stylus, but it lacks the oomph that makes sketching in Photoshop Touch and S Note such a treat. Samsung has said that it’s working with developers to broaden the S-Pen’s abilities, but there’s no telling how long it’ll be before the next solid S-Pen apps see the light of day.

Text input via handwriting is another mixed bag. It’s generally very solid if you’ve got clear, distinct, easy to parse handwriting for the Note to recognize, but your mileage is going to vary if your penmanship skews toward the sloppy end of things. The temptation to try and go all-in with the S-Pen can be awfully strong, but the standard on-screen keyboard has some distinct advantages, not least of which is sheer speed.

DISPLAY, CAMERA, & BATTERY

There’s nothing outright wrong with the Galaxy Note’s 10.1-inch display, but there’s not a whole lot worth writing home about either. The panel (like most of the ones you’ll see pop up in Android tabs) runs at 1280 by 800, which works out to a pixel density of 149.45 ppi — respectable for a tablet of this size, but it’s rather unsatisfying after laying eyes on the Apple’s newest iPad. Even companies like Acer are going big with their tablet displays, so it’s sort of a bummer to see Samsung stay conservative here.

That groaning aside, colors were bright and vivid (there’s a setting to switch between viewing modes, in case you’re feeling picky) even as I spun the Note around looking for bum viewing angles (there weren’t any).

This really shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone, but both Galaxy Note 10.1’s 5-megapixel rear camera and 1.9-megapixel front-facer leave quite a bit to be desired. It’s possible to get coax some generally decent shots out of the Note’s camera, but the results are all too often grainy and washed out.

Then again, you really shouldn’t be using this thing to take photos in the first place when there’s a strong chance that your phone could do a much better job at it. That said, the fact that the camera sucks still sort of stings — it’s awfully fun to take pictures of people and Photoshop their eyes out, but you’d be hard-pressed to create a stunning finishing product when the source image is iffy.

Feel free to record video too, so long as your expectations are properly tempered. The rear camera is capable of recording 720p video, but the resulting footage is similarly unsatisfying. The cameras will certainly do in a pinch, but nine times out of ten you’re better off reaching for something else to snap shots with.

When it came time to perform our standard battery stress test (for the uninitiated: screen brightness is set to 50%, and when not directly being used, the device runs through an endless series of Google image searches), the tab managed to hang in there for just under nine hours and 20 minutes. Not too shabby at all, especially considering how slim the darned thing is.

It’s hard to translate that number into days of actual use since most people won’t be sitting around glued to a tablet nonstop, in my experience that equates to nearly three days of on-again-off-again use before the battery finally went belly up. As always, your mileage is going to vary, but I suspect you won’t need to run to a power outlet too often.

Conclusion

And now we come to the most important question of all: is it worth buying one of these things? I’d wager very few people would consider buying a niche device like the Galaxy Note 10.1 solely because its got a nifty processor, or because it’s slim and light. In the end, the deciding factor is going to be the S-Pen. If you’re a fan of the gimmick (or just a general Android fan), then the Galaxy Note 10.1 is definitely worth your consideration.

That said, devices like this don’t exist in a vacuum. Its $499 base price tag puts it right alongside the new 16GB iPad, which is sure to be a contender for any potential tablet customer. Considering the iPad’s strong developer support and truly excellent display, it still seems like the more worthwhile purchase right now. I wish that weren’t the case (I’m head-over-heels when it comes to this S-Pen business) but it’s a sad truth — since Samsung is trying something different with the Note 10.1, there just aren’t many apps that really take full advantage of the S-Pen yet.

If we consider strictly Android tablets, there are any number of tweaks that would make the Galaxy Note 10.1 the device to own — a higher resolution screen, more S-Pen-compatible apps, and sturdier construction all come to mind. If Samsung took any two of those issues and addressed them, the Note 10.1 would be a must-buy. As it stands though, the Galaxy Note is a very good Android tablet that just barely missed crossing the threshold into greatness.

You can follow us on Twitter or join our Facebook Fan Page for more updates like this or subscribe to our Rss Feed and You can also ask a problems related to computers or technology on Ask Tech Inspire+ and get your solutions faster.

Share This Post If U Like!!!

Samsung’s Black Galaxy S III Said To Launch In October With 64GB Of Storage

2012-08-20T03:58:00.001-07:00

Samsung’s Galaxy S III is a pretty lust-worthy gadget to begin with, but the Korean electronics giant just won’t leave well enough alone. First they put together a model that managed to combine both an LTE radio and an Exynos quad-core chipset, a combination that unfortunately hasn’t trickled out of the country yet.

Now it seems that U.K. phone retailer Clove has the skinny on yet another hardware revision. The folks atPhandroid spotted a landing page for Clove created for that handsome new black GSIII that’s been spotted in the wild that mentions it will ship with 64GB of internal memory in October.

Better late than never, I suppose. Galaxy fanatics may remember that Samsung promised a 64GB Galaxy S III at the company’s ostentatious London launch event, but the device failed to appear in due course. Naturally, many assumed that particular model got the axe at some point, a notion that Samsung eventually denied — according to them, the 64GB version was instead slated for a launch during the “second half” of 2012.

It shouldn’t come as much surprise that there isn’t much information on what the mildly-tweaked handset will cost, or when we can expect to see it embark on a world tour. In fact, Samsung hasn’t even officially confirmed the device’s existence, but that’s all right — third-party retailers and carriers (including T-Mobile USA, which is a bit of an eyebrow-raiser) are apparently more than happy to spread the word anyway.

Share This Post If U Like!!!

How to Block Useless Websites from your Google Search Results

2012-08-20T03:51:00.000-07:00

Do you see spam or useless websites in your Google search results? Here are some tips to help you permanently block such websites from showing up in your Google results.

Google has been getting better at identifying and removing spam websites from their search results pages but sometimes not-so-useful sites do manage to slip through the Google filters. What can you do to prevent such sites from appearing in your Google results?

Approach #1: Block Sites at the Browser Level

Google offers an easy-to-use Chrome add-on called Personal Blocklist that lets you block entire web domains from showing up in your Google search results. If you spot any irrelevant website in search results pages, just click the block link (screenshot below) and all pages from that website will be hidden from your Google results forever.

Block Websites from appearing in your Google Search Results

The Chrome add-on implements client-side filtering – the blocked websites are still getting served in Google search results as before and the add-on simply hides them on your screen using CSS.

A limitation with this approach is that it works only inside Google Chrome. That is, if you are searching Google inside Firefox or maybe on your mobile phone, the site filters that you have created in Chrome won’t be available to you.

Approach #2: Block Sites per Google Account

Google also offers a web dashboard for manually blocking spam websites, one URL at a time. You can add up to 500 different websites to your blocked list and Google won’t show pages from any of the included sites provided you are signed in with your Google account. That’s the promise but unfortunately, this solution doesn’t seem to work anymore.

Approach #3: Google Search with a Global Filter

If you would like to create a “global filter” for your Google search results that works inside all browsers including mobile devices, you can make use of Google’s Custom Search (CSE).

CSE, if you are new, is Google except that it is meant for searching a smaller set of websites and not the entire Internet. Now here’s a little trick. You can do a reverse configuration such that Google CSE searches the entire Internet except the websites that you think are useless. Here’s how you can set it up in 2 minutes.

Step #1 (optional): Assuming that you have been blocking websites using the Personal Blocklist add-on in Chrome, click the BlockList icon in your Google Chrome toolbar and choose “Export” to download the list of all sites that you have blocked so far.

Step #2: Click here to create a Custom Search Engine. Give it a name, description and in the “Sites to Search” section, enter all the popular TLDs (like *.com, *.org, etc) one per line.

Whitelist all the popular top-level domains like .com, .org, etc.

Step #3: Click Next to save the changes. You’ll have an option to test your CSE. Click Next again and on this screen, click the link that says “Include more sites.” This is where you’ll enter the list of “bad” websites the should be blocked in Google Search Results.

Choose Exclude Sites -> Exclude Sites in Bulk and enter all the domains that should be removed from your Google search results. You can even copy-paste your Chrome Block list here. Save the changes and your “clean” Google search engine is ready.

[*] If you would like your Google search engine to search all known TLDs and not just the popular ones, go to the Manage Search Engine page inside Google CSE and change the “How to search included sites” option from “Search only included sites” to “Search the entire web but emphasize included sites.”

Filter the less-useful websites from your Google Results

Google CSE results are as relevant as the main Google web search engine and the layout looks good on mobiles and tablets as well. The only manual work you will have to do going forward is to keep the Chrome block list and the CSE exclude list in sync with each other.

Share This Post If U Like!!!

A Useful Site for Train Travellers in Delhi

2012-08-20T03:45:00.004-07:00

A little-known Indian Railways website provides the platform numbers of various trains travelling to or out of Delhi stations in real time.

The Delhi division of Indian Railways maintains a one-page website that offers the current status of trains arriving or departing from the Old Delhi, New Delhi and Hazrat Nizamuddin railways stations.

The charts update automatically and is an attempt to bring the live on-station charts online.

What is my Train’s Platform Number?

This nameless website, hosted at 122.252.248.147, is slow and not pretty but it offers one bit of information that you can otherwise get only after calling the railway station – it tells you the exact platform number on which your train will arrive (or depart from).

You know the kind of panic and chaos that happens when the platform number of a train is changed at the last moment (not an infrequent phenomenon) and the live information available on this little website will hopefully help you plan a little better.

Unfortunately, the site only has information for trains arriving in or out of Delhi.

Share This Post If U Like!!!

Tips for Buying Domains through Google Apps

2012-08-20T03:44:00.003-07:00

You can buy Internet domains through Google Apps but some TLDs like .org or country codes like .in are not available in the free edition of Google Apps.

When you buy a web domain through Google Docs, you get personalized email addresses (like me@mydomain.com instead of me@gmail.com) plus you can setup a quick website on Google Sites without having to pay for web hosting. The domains are registered privately meaning others cannot see your contact information in the public WHOIS database.

Google Apps comes in two flavors – the free edition (where you just pay for the domain name) and the business edition (where you pay for the domain and the number of users).

Tip #1: How to Sign-up for Google Apps Free Edition

For business reasons, the Google Apps homepage includes no mention of the free edition but you can use this secret link to go straight to the sign-up form. The link is otherwise hidden under the “Pricing” section of the Google Apps website.

Tip #2: Buy Country-Specific Domains in Google Apps

You can now buy country-specific domains (like .in, .org.in and even .cc) through Google Apps. The following chart shows the current domain registration prices for various TLDs that are available through Google Apps.

The global TLDs are registered through GoDaddy.com or eNom.com while Google haspicked DomainDiscount24.com as the registrar for handling international domains. Some domain extension in the chart are marked red - read the next tip to know why?

Worldwide Domains		Country Specific Domains
TLD	Domain Price ($/year)	TLD	Domain Price ($/year)
.biz	$12	.be, .es, .pl	$8
.com	$12	.cc	$15
.info	$12	.co	$25
.mobi	$12	.cz, .nl, .com.es,	$10
.name	$10	.co.in	$10
.net	$10	.in, .net.in, .org.in	$8
.org	$12	.ch, .com.mx,.com.co	$12
.tv	$8	.mx	$30

Tip #3: Buy Unsupported Domains through Google Apps

Google has made one important change recently. They no longer offer global TLDs like .org or .net for purchase with the free edition of Google Apps. You can buy a .com domain as before but for a .org or .co web address, you have to sign-up for the Google Apps business edition.

Going back to the above chart, the domain extensions highlighted in red are only available for purchase with the business edition of Google Apps.

Google Apps (free) does not support purchase of .org or .net domains?

Here’s a simple workaround though. When you are signing up for the free version of Google Apps but need a domain name that is only available in the business edition of Google Apps, take this approach – sign-up for the business edition of Google Apps (sign-up link) and once the domain is registered, just cancel your subscription.

Google won’t charge your credit for 30 days and if you cancel during this period, your Business edition will simply be downgraded to the Free edition of Google Apps.

Share This Post If U Like!!!

YouTube Offers a Choice – Watch One Long Ad or Multiple Short Ads

2012-08-17T09:14:00.007-07:00

YouTube offers advertisers an option to display video ads (they call them Instream Ads) in the beginning of a video (pre-roll), after the video (post-roll) or even during the video (mid-roll). The longer videos, like the full-length movies on YouTube, can have multiple instream ads embedded in one video.

YouTube is also testing a slightly different style of advertising where the viewer has the option to choose the type of invideo advertising.

The viewer can either opt for one long commercial (pre-roll) and watch the entire video uninterrupted or he can opt for multiple short commercials that will pop-up at different times in the video (mid-roll). Here’s a quick video demo.

Also, if you opt for a single long commercial break, you still get the skip option but only after you have watched the first two minutes of the commercial.

Share This Post If U Like!!!

What it takes to be a Facebook India Ambassador

2012-08-15T03:37:00.000-07:00

Convince your friends and family members to use Facebook on their mobile phones and you could be promoted as an Ambassador of Facebook India.

Facebook has introduced a new Ambassador program in India to promote the usage of Facebook on mobile phones in the country.

The requirements are simple and everyone can participate. You are supposed to convince your friends to install the Facebook app on their mobile phones. Once the app is installed, your friend will also have to associate his or her mobile phone number with Facebook.

You can then pass on this list of phone numbers to Facebook India and users who bring the maximum number of conversions will be rewarded with the Facebook Ambassador status.

There’s no compensation involved and going forward, you may be required to promote Facebook in your school as stated in the TOS document.

If instructed by Facebook, you will engage in activities to promote Facebook.

Such activities may include working with your school administration to setup the authentic page for your school on Facebook, creating you college Yearbook on Facebook, uploading pictures of each class and tagged students in the pictures, organizing a Facebook Day on Campus that focuses on educating the audience about using Facebook on mobile devices, etc.

Dictation – Speech Recognition in the Browser

2012-08-15T03:10:00.003-07:00

You can use Google Chrome as a free voice recognition software to write longer emails and documents without even installing anything on your Windows or Mac computer.

Ever noticed that microphone icon on some web pages?

The newer versions of Google Chrome include an impressive speech recognition engine that even works offline but with one limitation – the feature is only available to text input fields (like the Google search box) and you can’t use Chrome’s speech recognition to write longer pieces of text (say a message inside Gmail).

Meet Dictation, a speech recognition app powered by Chrome itself but one that is not limited to text boxes. Here’s a quick getting started guide:

Use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + Shift + . (period) or click the big microphone icon to activate dictation mode and talk.
If you make a mistake, or if Chrome makes an error in transcription, simple click the incorrect word and edit it inline.
You can say “new line” to insert a new line or “delete everything” to make a fresh start.

Dictation requires the Google Chrome browser. The full source code is available atctrlq.org and what follows is a brief video demo.

Desktop Wallpaper Website Syncs with Dropbox

2012-08-09T04:37:00.005-07:00

A new website offers beautiful wallpapers for your Windows or Mac desktop and you can also sync your favorite backgrounds with Dropbox.

Bored of your desktop wallpaper? Check out Desktoppr, an online gallery of high quality backgrounds for your widescreen desktop. The site has an extensive collection of wallpapers and registered users can even upload their own images to the public gallery.

Save Wallpapers Directly to Dropbox

While you may confuse Desktoppr as just another online repository of wallpapers, it does offer one unique feature – the site is Dropbox ready.

You can link the wallpaper site to your Dropbox account and you will then be able to send any of the wallpapers from the site to your Dropbox with a click. The synchronization is quick and saved wallpapers will appear in your local Dropbox folder almost instantly.

And it’s a two-way sync. If you add any of your own images to the app-specific wallpaper folder inside Dropbox, the images show up on the Desktoppr website for public consumption (make sure you have the necessary rights).

You will have to set your Dropbox wallpaper folder as the default “Picture Location” (under Control Panel – > Appearance – > Personalization) for Windows to pick up these new backgrounds (see the next screenshot).

The idea is simple but clever and I wish more web apps – especially the ones around documents and photo sharing – could offer this sort of one-click integration with Dropbox.

Share This Post If U Like!!!

Outlook Imports Email Addresses from Facebook, Offers No Takeout

2012-08-09T04:30:00.003-07:00

You can easily import Facebook email addresses, birthdays and phone numbers into the your Outlook address book but there’s no takeout option.

The new Outlook.com web mail service from Microsoft makes it super easy for you to import contact details from Facebook and LinkedIn into your address book. It imports birthdays, addresses, phone numbers (from LinkedIn) and also the email addresses of your Facebook friends.

If you haven’t had a chance to try this yet, go to outlook.com and switch to the People tab. Now choose “Add People” from the “Manage” menu and choose Facebook from the list of available options.

Outlook will now import your Facebook friends details into your address but this data won’t include their email addresses. Open the “Add People” menu again and now you will see an option to import Facebook email addresses.

Outlook is a one-way street

This is useful because you can export your Outlook address book as a CSV file and import it into other systems like Gmail but there’s one big limitation.

Outlook will not let you export any data that was auto-imported from a social network network like Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn. You can see the imported email addresses, phone numbers and birthdays of contacts inside Outlook.com but you can’t take this data out to another service at least yet. If you add any custom data to an auto-imported contact, that data will however be included into the CSV file.

Fortunately, there’s Yahoo! Mail that does allow quick export of Facebook email addresses.

Video – Import Email Addresses from Facebook

Share This Post If U Like!!!

Google’s Self-Driving Cars Complete 300K Miles Without Accident, Deemed Ready For Commuting

2012-08-08T08:33:00.000-07:00

Google’s self-driving car project is probably one of the most audacious experiments the company has embarked upon. Today, Google announcedanother milestone for this project: its fleet of about a dozen autonomous cars has now driven 300,000 miles without a single accident under computer control. While this is obviously very positive news for the project, Google warns that “there’s still a long road ahead.” The cars still need to learn how to handle snow-covered roads, for example, and how to interpret temporary construction signs and other situations that could throw its systems for a loop.

It’s not clear how many of these 300,000 miles were driven on Google’s secret racecourse, by the way.

According to today’s update, Google also plans to soon let some of the team’s members drive the cars solo for their daily commutes. Currently, the cars are always driven by at least two people, but the team apparently feels that the project has reached a point where it’s safe to just have one person operate the cars.

Google also announced that it has added the Lexus RX450h hybrid car to its self-driving car family.

“One day we hope this capability will enable people to be more productive in their cars,” said Chris Urmson, Google’s engineering lead for this project, in a blog post today, “For now, our team members will remain in the driver’s seats and will take back control if needed.” There have, of course been some accidents that involved Google’s self-driving cars in the past. All of these, however, happened while humans were in control of the cars.

Share This Post If U Like!!!

How to Create your wwn iPad Case with a Book

2012-08-08T08:31:00.001-07:00

Learn how to create your own protective case for the Apple iPad at home using an old book. The total cost of the iPad cover will be $0.

If you have an old hardcover book that’s gathering dust in the basement and you never plan to read it again, turn it into a hollow book and then use that secret compartment as a safe to hide your cash, cellphone or any other valuable items.

How to Make a Hollow Book

Carry Pad suggests using an hollow book as a case for the Apple iPad. The technique is more or less the same but you need to careful when choosing the book for the iPad case – it should have proper padding around the sides and the thickness of the book pages should be enough to support your iPad.

Your Home-made iPad Case

The iPad is this photograph is facing down but you can even invert the device and the hollow book case will then prevent your iPad back from getting scratches.

Share This Post If U Like!!!

WordPress Plugins that Power your Blog

2012-08-08T08:23:00.003-07:00

This is a list of the best WordPress plugins that will add more functionality to your WordPress blog and they are all free.

What follows is a complete list of WordPress plugins that work behind the scenes to add new functionality to these sites that’s otherwise not available in the vanilla version of WordPress.org.

These are all free and open-source plugins and you can find them in the WordPress plugin repository.

The Best WordPress Plugins for your Website

1. Search Regex – This adds extremely powerful search and replace capabilities to your blog. You can find and replace almost any kind of data stored on your WordPress site including post titles, excerpts, comments, and meta data. It even supports regular expressions.

2. Redirection – If the URL of an existing post has changed or if an external site is linking to a non-existent page on my site, I can create redirection rules and automatically forward all the incoming traffic to the right pages.

3. Bing 404 – If someone lands on a 404 page for which redirection is not yet enabled, this plug-in will display links to relevant article on the error page. For example, a 404 page like labnol.org/googledocs will have links to my Google Docs articles.

4. WordPress SEO – This is probably the only SEO plugin you need for your WordPress blog. It helps you create better titles, you can block duplicate pages (like archive pages) from search bots, and it also adds the necessary meta tags required for more search-friendly Google snippets.

5. W3 Total Cache – This is possibly the best caching plug-in for WordPress and it will definitely help improve your site’s score as far as page speed is concerned. I was previously using Hyper Cache but W3 Total Cache does much more – it lets you minify scripts, cache database queries, add expiration tags to static images and more.

6. FB Open Graph – This plugin will insert the necessary Open Graph meta tags to your blog’s header so that you blog posts look good and have the right snippets when they are shared on Facebook or Google Plus.

7. 404 Email Notifier – This sends you an email notification as soon as a visitor lands on a 404 page on your WordPress website. The email messages have details about the visitor’s IP address, what browser they are using and the referral URL that led him to that broken link.

8. SlideShare – This helps you easily embed SlideShare presentations in blog posts with the help of short codes – see samples.

9. Smart YouTube – This lets you embed YouTube videos in blog posts using standing video URLs and the embedded player can be customized. It adds a thumbnail of the embedded video in the RSS feed and the same plug-in can also be used to embed videos from Facebook and Vimeo.

10. YARRP – The related posts plug-in adds links to old stories that may be contextually related to the content of the current story. It also helps expose your archived content to search bots.

11. WP Optimize – Use the WP Optimize plugin to clean-up your WordPress database tables. It can remove post revisions, trash spam comments and also optimize your MySQL tables so that it works more efficiently and also consumes less space.

12. WP-DBManager – This plugin will help you backup your WordPress database manually or you can set up a scheduled job for automatic backup and the database files will be sent to your email address at set intervals. Advanced users can use WP-DBManager to run SQL queries against their WordPress database without the phpMyAdmin tool. There are other plugins that can save backups to Amazon S3 andDropbox.

13. Debug Queries – Is your blog slow? Use the Debug Queries plugin plugin to determine which MySQL queries are taking more time to execute and thus slowing down the blog. Debug Bar is another related plugin org that shows PHP warnings, queries and other helpful debugging information in the WordPress admin bar.

14. Auto Post Thumbnail – WordPress added support for Post Thumbnail Images in WordPress 2.9 but if you have been using WordPress for long, thumbnails may not be associated with your old posts. Use the Auto Post thumbnail plugin to automatically generate thumbnails for such posts using the first image found in the post content.

15. Regenerate Thumbnails – When you change the default size (height and width) of post thumbnails (or featured images) on your blog, you can use this plugin to regenerate thumbnails with the new dimensions.

16. Google XML Sitemaps – Since you want Google and other search engines to know about each and every page of your WordPress website, you need an XML sitemap and this plug-in lets you generate one in a click.

17. XML Video Sitemap – The plugin generates an XML Sitemap for your WordPress blog with all the YouTube videos that are embedded in your blog posts. I am also usingXML Sitemap for Images and XML Sitemap for Mobile.

18. Date in a Nice Tone – This plugin offers an alternate way to display dates in your blog posts. It displays the amount of time – like “a few days ago,” or “in the last month,” or “over a year ago” – that has passed since a post or page was published.

19. SyntaxHighlighter Evolved – If you regularly embed code snippets in your WordPress blog posts, this plugin will help you highlight the syntax of the source code in different colors for more comfortable reading. Supports all popular programming languages.

20. Pubsubhubbub – This will help you beat content scrapers using Fat Pings. When you publish a blog post, it will instantly ping Google and that is a strong signal to the search engine that you are the original author.

21. WP-Associatizer – This plug-in will automatically rewrite any Amazon URLs in your posts to use your Amazon Associates ID.

22. Template Tag SC – WordPress offers numerous template tags – like wp_list_pages() or wp_tag_cloud() – that you can use in your theme files. The plugin will help you insert the sam template tags directly in your blog posts or pages using Short Codes.

23. Login Logger – This plugin logs the IP address and the exact date & time when a user logs into your WordPress dashboard. It also keeps track of any unsuccessful login attempts. Use this plugin in combination with Limit Login Attempts to automatically lock out users after they have made ‘n’ unsuccessful login attempts.

24. CF Shortcode – This helps you insert custom fields inside your WordPress posts using the visual editor. This comes extremely handy when you want to add custom JavaScript inside your WordPress posts.

25. Advanced Excerpt – The post excerpts in WordPress are fixed at 55 words and often displayed with [...] ellipsis at the end. This plugin lets you to specify a custom length of excerpts, you can get rid of the ellipsis and the excerpts can be configured to have full sentences so that there are no weird cuts.

WordPress Plugins – Retired but Useful

The first version of this list was published in 2010 and since then, I have removed or deactivated a few WordPress plugins. Here’s why:

1. WordPress.com Stats – I am using Google Analytics to track site stats and therefore it doesn’t make sense to have another tracking program for the same goal.

2. Akismet – The comments on this site are powered by Disqus and they seem to offer decent spam protection on their own.

3. WordPress PDA – This plugin helped serve the mobile version of this site based on their browser’s user agent. Digital Inspiration now uses a responsive design and thus the same site is served to both desktop and mobile users.

4. WP-Paginate – The paginate plugin provide better navigation and also helps search engines find and crawl deep content on your site. The new design of this site has pagination built-in and therefore this plugin is no longer necessary.

Share This Post If U Like!!!

Improving the Security of your WordPress Blog

2012-08-08T08:16:00.002-07:00

WordPress powered websites are often target for hackers. Here are the some of the best security plugins and tips to better protect your WordPress blog.

About a month ago, this WordPress blog was hacked. And since my other websites like ctrlq.org and hundredzeros.com are hosted on the same web server, the hacker successfully managed to wipe off all these sites from the Internet as well.

The web hosting company says that it could have happened because one of the sites was running an older version of WordPress. The passwords weren’t compromised though as all the login activity happened from known IP addresses. It was a tough period but fortunately, the deleted sites have been restored and the traffic is also back to normal.

Here’s a list of changes I have done to improve the security of my WordPress blogs though the perpetual worry that such a thing can happen again will remain.

#1. Login with your email address

When you install a WordPress blog, the first user is called “admin” by default. You should create a different user to manage your WordPress blog and either remove the “admin” user or change the role from “administrator” to “subscriber.”

You can actually create a completely random (hard to guess) username and then use your email address to log into WordPress. The plugin WP-Email Login will add support for email based usernames in the WordPress login form.

#2. Do not advertise your WordPress version to the world

WordPress sites always publish the version number thus making it easier for people to determine if you are running an outdated non-patched version of WordPress.

It is easy to remove the WordPress version from page but you need to make one more change. Delete the readme.html file from your WordPress installation directory as it also advertises your WordPress version to the world.

#3. Don’t let others “Write” to your WordPress directory

Login to your WordPress Linux shell and execute the following command to get a list of all “open” directories where any other user can write files.

find . -type d -perm -o=w

You may also want to execute the following two commands in your shell to set the right permissions for all your WordPress files and folders (reference).

find /your/wordpress/folder/ -type d -exec chmod 755 {} \;
find /your/wordpress/folder/ -type f -exec chmod 644 {} \;

For directories, 755 (rwxr-xr-x) means that only the owner has write permission while others have read and execute permissions. For files, 644 (rw-r–r–) means that file owners have read and write permissions while others can only read the files.

#4. Rename your WordPress tables prefix

If you have installed WordPress using the default options, your WordPress tables have names like wp_posts or wp_users. It is thus a good idea to change the prefix of tables (wp_) to some random value. The Change DB Prefix plugin lets you rename your table prefix to any other string with a click.

#5. Prevent users from browsing your WordPress directories

This is important. Open the .htaccess file in your WordPress root directory and add the following line at the top.

Options -Indexes

It will prevent the outside world from seeing a listing of files available in your directories in case the default index.html or index.php files are absent from those directories.

#6. Update the WordPress Security Keys

Go here to generate six security keys for your WordPress blog. Open the wp-config.php file inside the WordPress directory and overwrite the default keys with the new ones.

These random salts make your stored WordPress passwords more secure and the other advantage is that if someone is logged into WordPress without your knowledge, they will get logged out immediately as their cookies will become invalid now.

#7. Keep a log of WordPress PHP and Database errors

The error logs can sometimes offer strong hints on what kind of invalid database queries and file requests are hitting your WordPress installation. I prefer the Error Log Monitor as it periodically sends the error logs by email and also displays them as a widget inside your WordPress dashboard.

To enable error logging in WordPress, add the following code to your wp-config.php file and remember to replace /path/to/error.log with the actual path of your log file. The error.log file should be placed in a folder not accessible from the browser (reference).

define('WP_DEBUG', true);
if (WP_DEBUG) {
 define('WP_DEBUG_DISPLAY', false);
 @ini_set('log_errors', 'On');
 @ini_set('display_errors', 'Off');
 @ini_set('error_log', '/path/to/error.log');
}

#9. Password Protect the Admin Dashboard

It is always a good idea to password protect the wp-admin folder of your WordPress since none of the files in this area are intended for people who are visiting your public WordPress website. Once protected, even authorized users will have to enter two passwords to log in to their WordPress Admin dashboard.

10. Track login activity on your WordPress server

You can use the “last -i” command in Linux to get a listing of all users who have logged into your WordPress server along with their IP addresses. If you find an unknown IP address in this list, it is definitely time to change your password.

Also, the following command will show the user login activity for a longer period of time grouped by IP addresses (replace USERNAME with your shell user name).

last -if /var/log/wtmp.1 | grep USERNAME | awk '{print $3}' | sort | uniq -c

Monitor your WordPress with Plugins

The WordPress.org repository contains quite a few good security related plugins that will continuously monitor your WordPress site for intrusions and other suspicious activity. Here are the essential ones that I would recommend.

Exploit Scanner – It will quickly scan all your WordPress files and blog posts and list the ones that may have malicious code. Spam links may be hidden in your WordPress blog posts using CSS or IFRAMES and the plugin will detect them as well.
WordFence Security – This is an extremely powerful security plugin that you should have. It will compare your WordPress core files with the original files in the repository so any modifications are instantly detected. Also, the plugin will lock out users after ‘n’ number of unsuccessful login attempts.
WordPress Sentinel – Another useful plugin that monitors your WordPress files and alerts you whenever files are added, deleted and edited in any of the watched folders.
WP Notifier – If you don’t login to your WordPress Admin dashboard too often, this plugin is for you. It will send you email alerts whenever new updates are available for the installed themes, plugins and core WordPress.
VIP Scanner – The “official” security plugin will scan your WordPress themes for any problems. It will also detect any advertising code that may have been injected into your WordPress templates.

Tip: You can also use the following Linux command to get a list of all files that have been modified in the last 3 days. Change mtime to mmin to see files modified “n” minutes ago.

find . -type f -mtime -3 | grep -v "/Maildir/" | grep -v "/logs/"

Secure your WordPress Login Page

Your WordPress login page is accessible to the world but if you wish to prevent non-authorized users from logging into WordPress, you have three choices.

Password Protect with .htaccess – This involves protecting the wp-admin folder of your WordPress with a username and password in addition to your regular WordPress credentials.
Google Authenticator – This excellent plugin adds two-step verification to your WordPress blog similar to your Google Account. You’ll have to enter the password and also the time-dependent code generated on your mobile phone.
Login Dongle – This plugin takes a very unique approach to protect your WordPress. It generates a bookmarklet with a secret question that you can add to you bookmarks. While on the WordPress login page, enter you credentials and then press this bookmarklet to get into your WordPress – the button on the login screen won’t work.

Share This Post If U Like!!!

Get A Read Receipt When Friends Open Your Email Message

2012-08-07T05:03:00.001-07:00

A free email tracking that sends notification email when the recipient opens and reads your email. Works with Gmail, Outlook, AOL, Windows Live Hotmail or Yahoo! Mail

If you are using Microsoft Outlook with Exchange Server, you can easily request read receipts and get notified when your email is opened by the recipient(s).

As such a tracking feature in not available in web email like Gmail, Yahoo! Mail or the new Windows Live Hotmail, here’s an extremely effective and free solution that works with every email program.

The service is called SpyPig and it will instantly send you a notification when your email is read by the recipient. The read receipt will also have other details like the IP address of the recipient and the exactly number of times he or she read your email.

Using SpyPig is simple – type your email address (where you wish to receive the notification) and they’ll give you a small tracking graphic that you have to embed in your outgoing Gmail message via a simple drag-n-drop (just like the Gmail Smileys). That’s it.

Now if you are worried about sharing your email address , read our previous email read receipt hack that shows you how to construct your own SpyPig kind of solution using Google Analytics or Statcounter.

The SpyPig trick however works only with Rich Text or HTML email, not plain text.

Share This Post If U Like!!!

Can Google Employees Read your Gmail?

2012-08-07T04:49:00.004-07:00

All your private emails are stored in Gmail. Can Google employees working on the Gmail product read your messages?

All your private and confidential emails are stored in your Gmail mailbox but are they secure? Can a Google employee working on the Gmail product read your messages?

In theory, the answer could be yes. Christopher Nguyen, who was earlier responsible for Google Apps operations at Google, shared this on Quora:

A small number of GMail related engineers have access to the servers as a matter of necessity to do their jobs; a very small number of people actually access the contents as a matter of necessity to do their jobs, and even then, almost always only the associated metadata.

The rest have to file a request and justify any access they ever need, which is extremely rare. All have to sign paperwork re users’ privacy at the risk of dismissal & legal action, knowing that whatever they do is discoverable. And ultimately, an internal culture of respecting users’ privacy helps keep one another in check.

Google also serves contextual text ads in Gmail and these ads are triggered based on the content of the email message that your currently reading. Obviously it is the bots that are scanning your Gmail messages for relevant keywords but Microsoft, with a hope that some Gmail users will shift to Hotmail, is using this point to target Google on privacy.

Some email services, like Gmail, actually read the contents of your mail (both sent and received, even if you aren’t a Gmail user but just sending to someone who is) in order to decide what kind of ads to serve up to you. They may call it “scanning” and attempt to equate it with less invasive activities like “checking for spam” but it’s quite different. For you, and the people you send mail to, it’s not spam, it’s personal.

Microsoft has also released a video, titled the Gmail Man, highlighting this Gmail behavior. Microsoft uploaded the video to YouTube, a platform owned by Google, and it isn’t therefore surprising that the video has garnered more dislikes than likes – after all, most YouTube users are also Gmail users and they aren’t buying Microsoft’s argument.

Share This Post If U Like!!!

Write Your Name in Different Languages and Styles

2012-08-07T04:47:00.004-07:00

Online tools that can help you write your name in unique styles and different languages.

Looking to write your name in different styles? Here’re some online tools to help you do just that:

1. Google Transliterate – India is a land of many languages and this online tool from Google will help you write your name in almost all prominent languages of the country including Hindi, Urdu, Tamil and Bengali.

2. Google Translate – If you want to write your name in a language like Chinese, Japanese or even Greek, you really need to get hold of a person who can speak that language. If you can’t find one, Google Translate is the next best option.

3. Elvish Language – This is something for Lord of the Rings fans. The page describes how you can easily represent your English name using the Tengwar script. The writing looks mysterious and it’s not very hard.

4. Braille Generator – The tool will convert your name into Braille, a popular writing system that enables blind people to read and write through touch. They just run their fingers across these tiny dots to read them.

5. Hobbit Runes – The runes were in use during the 1st century AD and were later replaced by the Latin alphabet. The tool will help you write you name using the ancient runic alphabets.

6. Babylon Tablets – Use this tool to write your name in the cuneiform script, the earliest known writing system in the world of the Babylonian era. The script was written on clay tablets and was then baked hard in a kiln.

7. Morse Code – Write your name in Morse Code, a system that was invented in the 19th century to transmit information using telegraph lines. The most popular Morse code phrase is SOS which is represented by “…—…” or 3 dots followed by 3 dashes followed by 3 dots.

8. Ancient Egyptian – The writing system of ancient Egyptians, known as Hieroglyphs, used symbols instead of characters. The tool take the first 16 characters of your name and converts them into the same hieroglyphs symbols that were used by Ancient Egyptians.

9. FДКЗ CУЯILLIC – Remember how they wrote "BORДT" on the movie posters of “Borat” – that was fake Russian and this tool can help you convert just about any text written in Latin into the same Faux Cyrillic style.

Share This Post If U Like!!!